


A Moment More

by JustCallMeEmrys



Series: For a While [2]
Category: Lethal Weapon (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hey ho get ready for every type of fallout but nuclear, Inhuman Riggs, It’s not delivery it’s depression, Murtaugh is still #STRESSED, Riggs deals with his emotions by pretending he doesn't have any, Riggs has a PhD in Avoiding His Problems, Riggs is a literal monster, Shadow Monster Riggs, Supernatural creatures are a thing now, Temporarily on hiatus, The AU nobody asked for RETURNS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 22:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13691577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustCallMeEmrys/pseuds/JustCallMeEmrys
Summary: Roger Murtaugh could count the things he knew on one hand:1) Supernatural creatures existed.2) Martin Riggs, his partner, was some sort of shadow monster.3) The world was a lot more complicated than he thought.4) He still knew nothing at all.5) The universe seemed determined to rectify that.Murtaugh wished he could go back to a time when he had no idea that his partner wasn't human, or that living nightmares lurked around every corner. But now that he knows, there's nothing stopping him from getting dragged into the mythological society that had always been right under his nose. Especially not when a figure from Riggs's past, who is all too eager to help grant his death wish, once more rears his head.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ATTENTION: If you haven't yet read "For a While", I HIGHLY recommend reading that first, otherwise this will probably make no sense lol.

The world was an awfully strange place. There weren't enough days in the year, nor enough years in a man, to even come close to truly understanding it. 

After fifty trips around the Sun, many of those spent as a robbery and homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department, Roger Murtaugh had assumed that he had seen everything he was going to see. Life, at his age, was supposed to be a breeze--smooth sailing from here on out. 

_Wisdom comes with age,_ Murtaugh had always been told. _Someday, you will know everything you are ever going to know, and the world will make sense._ He had thought-- _hoped_ \--that he had hit that age, or was at least close enough to it. If he was wise, then he could spread his wisdom to his children. If he knew everything he would ever know, then life would be calm and predictable.

Ever since a certain ex-SEAL nutjob--who moonlighted as living darkness, of all things--had been dropped into his lap, his life had become anything but calm and predictable.

And Murtaugh realized that he knew _nothing._

Monsters existed. Not the metaphorical kind, but  _actual monsters_ \--creatures straight out of legends and nightmares. He had seen them; odd things that couldn't possibly be explained away with anything he knew. 

And Martin Riggs was one of them. A monster, a creature, a _thing_  that could pull off one hell of a human impression. An amorphous darkness that defied all logic. An Eldritch Abomination that could tear an SUV to shreds in the blink of an eye.

But Riggs was also his partner, his friend, his _family._ Family was supposed to accept one another unconditionally, and as far as Murtaugh was concerned, that concept applied even to whatever Riggs was supposed to be.

But Riggs was also an idiot. A complete and utter _dumbass._  A fool whose dedication and devotion had been launched clear over the wall that divided "admirable" from "alarming". A man who had no qualms over hunting down the head of drug cartel _on his own_  to deliver some illegal--though well-deserved--justice. 

And Murtaugh fully intended to tell Riggs just how he felt about his partner's general disregard for the future. 

That is, after Murtaugh finally _found_ the man, which he was finding awfully difficult to do. Mexico, after all, was quite a large country, and Riggs was just one person; one person that had been trained by the Navy and had an as of yet unspecified ability to transform himself.

Murtaugh had been having a positively _wonderful_ two weeks.

But he had found him this time, Murtaugh was sure of it. Well, about eighty percent sure, but that was the most confident he had felt yet. 

After a fruitless ten-day search up and down the California-Mexico border, Murtaugh had shifted gears. Riggs had proven himself nigh impossible to track, and Murtaugh had felt like he was getting nowhere fast. So if he couldn't pick up a trail for his own target, then he would just find his _target's_ quarry, who was not nearly as stealthy or as secretive as Riggs was. 

For an old man targeted by law enforcement officials--and rival drug cartels--everywhere within a one hundred mile radius, Tito Flores had one hell of an extravagant, public lifestyle. Just three days, and Murtaugh had already narrowed Tito's location down to Baja. Two days after that, and Murtaugh not only had the hotel that Tito was staying in, but he was pretty damn sure that he even had the room number. Sometimes it paid off to have contacts south of the border.

Like when he was trying to stop a suicidal shadow monster from doing something he wouldn't be able to undo.

Just a normal, common situation Murtaugh had found himself in.

Though, maybe his contact was wrong, because while the hotel in front of him looked fancy enough for the head of a major crime family, it looked _way_ too put together for it to have been visited by Riggs. It was still standing, for one. Murtaugh had expected at least a _bit_ of fire to have greeted him. But here the hotel stood, entirely undamaged.

Maybe the intel was wrong? Or perhaps it was out of date, and Tito had left and Murtaugh had just missed him? Maybe he wasn't at the right hotel?

High up above his head, one of the fifth-floor windows exploded outwards with a crash and a shout, raining shards of glass and _an entire man_ down into the street, a scant ten feet from Murtaugh. The man landed with the _crunch-SQUISH_ of flesh hitting pavement at forty-two miles per hour, but Murtaugh didn't hear the sound that marked the man's passing. 

All he heard was the the rapid crack of gunfire, and a cacophonous noise like a freight train was crashing through the fifth floor of the hotel.

Murtaugh drew in a slow breath, held it until his lungs ached, and then released it in one great huff.

_'Found him.'_

* * *

_"¿Estás bien?"_  Riggs asked. He made a marked effort to shake the aggressive snarl that had started building in his throat the moment he heard movement on the other side of the room. Turned out it _wasn't_ another gun-toting jackass, but a half-dressed woman cowering under the sink in the en suite bathroom, her hand pressed against her mouth as tears rolled down her face. Riggs kicking the door right off of its hinges probably hadn't helped the terror-fueled panic she was slipping into.

When the woman didn't answer his question, Riggs held out his hand to help her up. She flinched away from it. He tried a comforting smile and said,  _"Estás a salvo de ese monstruo ahora."_

The woman shook her head, and pulled herself into tighter ball. _"Tú eres el monstruo aquí,"_ she whispered.

Riggs's jaw tightened, jagged teeth that didn't quite fit in a human mouth slicing into his gums. Right. As if he could forget. _"Sí,"_ he agreed with a casual, flat tone. He rose to his feet and took a step away from her, jerking his head towards the door of the en suite, and to the archway leading out of the bedroom. _"Sal de aquí."_  He stalked out of the bathroom without another word or glance at the woman, although he tracked her heavy footsteps as she dashed out into the hall and made her escape. He didn't want to end up with a bullet in the back of his head because a mistress had decided to be brave.

Not yet, anyway. His work wasn't done yet.

Final distraction out of the way, Riggs made his way back over to the four poster bed, his fang-baring grin stretching wider than should have been possible on a human face. "Now," he said to his captive audience. "Where were we?"

Whatever Tito Flores tried to say, it came out as a jumbled, muffled mess. Ball gags tended to do that.

Riggs cupped his ear and leaned closer to the bound man. "Sorry, didn't quite catch that. Poor hearing, you know. Runs in the family." Riggs snapped his fingers. "Oh, right! _Family_ is why I'm here. You killed mine, remember?"

Tito shook his head, more muffled shouts catching on the gag between his teeth. 

"Oh, you don't remember? Sure. I mean, I suppose a busy, enterprising man such as yourself goes around handing out death orders regularly. What's one daughter of another crooked politician you've got stuffed in your pocket?" Riggs cast around the room, searching the puddles of blood and shredded bodies that littered the floor. One arm, severed from its owner and tossed away, still clutched a handgun in its stiff fingers. Riggs plucked the gun up out of the puddle of blood it was bathing in, shaking it until the arm slipped loose and flopped back to the ground like a dead fish. "But, see, here's the problem. You didn't kill the daughter of a rebellious employee. You killed my _wife._ You killed my _son._ And things like me will kill someone for giving their family a  _paper cut."_

In one movement, Riggs had crossed half the room. He jammed the muzzle of the handgun up underneath Tito's chin, forcing the man's head back so Riggs could look into his panicked eyes. The chilling pressure ever present in Riggs's chest swelled to a point just south of unbearable, and it released itself the only way it could without just ripping his body apart: Tito's face became bathed in a bright light as Riggs's eyes blazed white, as if twin stars had fit themselves snuggly into his eye sockets. Color faded from Riggs's vision, and the very edges of the room became fuzzy and unfocused, but all that mattered to Riggs--all that held his attention--was the sweaty, quivering lump of flesh before him, whose entire life balanced on the barrel of a gun.

He pulled the trigger.

At the last possible second, Riggs twisted his wrist. The bullet flew wide and punched a hole through the wall, rather than Tito's brain. The man flinched, and probably whimpered, but the gun going off so close to him left Riggs's ears ringing.

The blood pounding in his head was louder.

Riggs bared his shark-like teeth in a feral grin that had nothing to do with happiness nor humor. He backed away from Tito, and made a big show of hitting the magazine release. The clip hit the floor with a clattering crack that pierced the tense silence. Tito's eyes tracked it all the way to the bloodstained floor, confusion and perhaps just a hint of hope encroaching on the terror that had constricted his pupils.

"I ain't gonna shoot you, Tito!" Riggs laughed. Like he was talking to a friend. Like every instinct wasn't _screaming_ at him to _devour_ the man in front of him for _daring to touch his family._

And hell, why shouldn't he? It was well within his right. It was his _nature._ Even certain Hellion cultures turned a blind eye to avenging the murder of one's family, so long as the deed was done quickly and discretely. Technically, Riggs was doing neither of those things, but it wasn't like any of the Hellion species would be brave enough to confront him about it.

It wasn't like he was going to get out of this confrontation alive, anyway.

Riggs was up in Tito's face again in the blink of an eye, barely withholding the snarl that lurked at the back of his throat.

His grip was slipping, he could feel it. His blood was beyond simply pounding in his veins--it coursed through him, a torrential river of rage and instinct. He could feel something shifting in his chest, a mass of slippery, shadowy snakes coiling and slithering in a tight ball around the pressing chill that sat where a human's heart would have been. He was just a step away from hitting the point of no return, a single moment of lapsed attention that would end with his body tearing itself apart from the inside out. His already hazy view of the room around him flickered in time with the sporadic glitching that clawed and pulled at the edges of his body, emotions that Tito had no idea he was broadcasting _so loudly_ rushing in to fill in the spaces his vision was leaving-- _terror_ and _confusion_ and _ay dios, este no es un hombre, este es el diablo._

"You don't deserve this," Riggs hissed, shaking the gun in his hand for emphasis. "My wife died in pain." Died scared and confused when Tito's man smothered her, because hitting her with a semi-truck hadn't been good enough. "My son suffocated inside her before anybody could cut him out." It had taken nineteen minutes after Miranda's heart had stopped for them to pull his child from her mangled womb--four minutes too late. The soft-edged weight of fetal fear had lingered in the emergency room for hours. "You don't deserve to get off easy. If they suffocated, then so should you." 

It would be child's play, really, to fill up Tito's chest with darkness and smoke. And then Riggs could take as long as he wanted, collapsing and tearing apart the bastard's lungs at his own pace, until Tito dangled to life by a thread.

And then Riggs would rip his way out, cutting that thread with all the force of the semi-truck that had destroyed his own lifeline.

Riggs didn't hear a thing, but Tito's eyes flickering away from his face to look over Riggs's shoulder was enough of a hint. Riggs diverted a fraction of his attention away from his prey, and a human form lit up at the very edges of his awareness, stood in the doorway directly behind him. 

He realized he recognized the scent of aftershave and gun grease just a moment too late.

* * *

The fifth floor looked like the aftermath of one of Riana's slasher movies. 

Blood pooled in every corner, splattering the walls from the floor trim all the way up to the crown molding. Furniture and walls alike were little more than piles of wood and plaster, and those that remained were pockmarked with bullet holes. A pair of broken pipes jutted up from the debris on one side of the room, the water they sprayed gathering in furrows larger than Murtaugh was tall that were carved into the floor.

And there were bodies _everywhere._

Murtaugh did his best to ignore the dismembered corpses as he picked his way across the fifth floor lobby and down the most damaged and dirty of the hallways that branched off from the epicenter of destruction, trying to step in areas with the least amount of blood and viscera so as to spare his shoes. 

The trail of destruction led to the suite at the end of the hall. The door had been ripped clean off its hinges and tossed back towards the floor lobby, all with enough force to have brought chunks of drywall with it. Even knowing what had done all the damage, an uneasy shiver rolled down his spine.

Going into a high-tension situation with a gun drawn would be foolish, but so would going in without one; Murtaugh decided to take the risk, and held his handgun at the ready.

He crept through the suite's living room, under the open archway into the master bedroom, and froze in his tracks. 

After working with Riggs for months--and having a basic knowledge of the man's _oddness_  for about as long--Murtaugh thought that he would have developed some sort of immunity. If he had, two weeks was apparently all it took to strip that away.

Riggs's body glitching and shearing apart at the edges was old hat, since it happened basically all the time, so Murtaugh didn't even pause when he saw his partner literally falling apart at the seams as he loomed over a half-naked old man that cowered at the foot of the four-poster bed. 

However, when Riggs swung around and pinned Murtaugh in place with glowing white eyes and a sharp-toothed snarl, primal fear latched onto his throat and lungs, and Murtaugh began to question every life choice that had led him to that moment.

That lull in action was brought to a rapid end when Riggs threw himself at Murtaugh with a guttural growl, crossing half of the room in the time it took Murtaugh to regret being born. The two hit the floor in a tangle of limbs, and more than a handful of swears on Murtaugh's part. Without registering what he was doing, Murtaugh jammed his gun between two of Riggs's ribs. Somehow, by the grace of God, that was as far as Murtaugh's knee-jerk reaction took him--he didn't pull the trigger.

Instead, he barked, "Riggs!"

The switch flipped. The aggression and anger sloughed off of Riggs's shoulders, and was instead replaced by surprise, confusion, and just a dash of what Murtaugh would have called fear, had he thought that Riggs was capable of that emotion.

"What?" Riggs blinked, and his face was back to normal. Just like that, the instinctual fear that had wound itself around Murtaugh's spine returned to wherever it lurked when it wasn't ruining his day. "Oh, hey Rog." He climbed off of the older man and offered a hand to help him back to his feet. Murtaugh slapped it away.

"'Oh hey Rog'?" Murtaugh parroted. "I follow you across Mexico for _two weeks_ and all I get is _'oh hey Rog'?"_

Riggs brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to retort, but the words caught in his throat. He shook his head. "Yeah, no, I don't got time for this," he said, raising his hands in a dismissive shrug. "Uh, thanks for coming, I guess--kind of weird that you did, not gonna lie--but you should leave now." 

"And let you do something you'll regret?"

Riggs's face darkened, and the room went right along with it--the shadows seemed to expand and contract with the clenching muscle in his jaw. "Fairly sure I won't regret it, Roger."

Right. Of course he wouldn't regret it. That was the wrong tactic. "And what about after?" Murtaugh asked. "Say you kill him. What then? The rest of his men won't let you leave the country alive."

The shadow of a wistful smile curled the corners of Riggs's mouth and softened the sharp lines around his eyes. "Here's hoping." He turned back towards Tito, his earlier rage trickling back to raise his shoulders, all the muscles in his blood-splattered arms tensing. "Get out of here, Rog. Go back to your family. Forget about me. Have a normal life."

Murtaugh wouldn't quite call it _anger,_ the feeling that rose up in his throat to burn his tongue, his hands curling into defiant fists at his sides. It was indignation, and concern, and a sense of urgency, and yeah, a little bit of anger, too--all rolled up into a new emotion that he wasn't sure he knew the name of.

He took a step forward, but stopped immediately and balanced on his toes, his legs refusing to bring him closer to the man that suddenly no longer looked as  _put together_ as a person should have been.

"C'mon, man, _please."_

Riggs whirled to face him, his expression wild. "What do you want me to do, Roger? What do you want me to do?" he demanded. "Just forget about Tito, and what he's done? Let him just get away with it? Sorry, but I literally _can't do that."_

"I'm not saying to forget about him!" Murtaugh said. "I'm saying do it the _right way."_

Riggs's form gave a particularly rough shake. When he settled again, his jagged teeth caught the yellow light of the overhead chandelier. "This feels like the right way to me."

"The _cop_ way, Riggs. You're a _cop."_

"Never was too good at that," Riggs said. He blinked, and his eyes lit up with white light, cracks branching outwards from his sockets to spread the glow to half of his face. He turned the frightful glower on Tito, who recoiled away with a muffled shout of terror. "I make a much better monster."

He didn't know why he said it. It just sort of...came out, erupting from his lips before he could register the words:

"Riggs, I _love you,_ man!"

For all Murtaugh knew, the world had stopped spinning. He could have heard a feather drop in Indiana. It didn't even look like Riggs was breathing--Murtaugh knew he sure wasn't. 

Ever so slowly, Riggs's stance shifted. He scratched his left ear; a nervous tic Murtaugh had noticed whenever Riggs would rather be anywhere but where he was. He cleared his throat. 

"Sorry, you...you _what?"_  Riggs asked after a long, awkward silence. "You _love_ me?" He pointed at his face, at his sharp teeth and burning eyes, and at the unnatural gray pallor that had faded his skin. "You suddenly go blind?"

"No," Murtaugh said. "And believe me, we're going to have a long talk about...all that. _After_ we take Tito Flores back to L.A., and throw every book we've got at him." They had more than enough evidence to make a number of convictions stick. The only way Tito would be leaving prison would be feet first or riding inside of an urn.

Riggs's form snapped back to human again as he worked his jaw soundlessly. He blinked. "Huh."

"That's all you've got to say?" Murtaugh asked. He had been hoping for something a bit... _more_ than that. Maybe not a reciprocation of his declaration, but at least _something;_ some hint that he wasn't talking to a sharp-toothed brick wall. 

"Well, no." Riggs's face went slack. He reached behind him, and pulled a bloodied handgun from his waistband. He snapped it up to eye level. "Duck."

Murtaugh jerked out of the way a moment before the bullet whistled by. He glanced, wide-eyed, to the armed man with a fresh bullet hole in his forehead that was in the process of sliding down the archway to the floor. Another man, armed to the teeth, trailed after him.

Murtaugh heard the sharp click of the trigger being pulled on an empty handgun. Behind him, Riggs cast a despondent look to a half-full clip abandoned in a puddle of blood five feet from him.

Riggs sighed. "Hell's bells and buckets of blood--"

Murtaugh drove his shoulder into Riggs's stomach--he'd apologize later--and tackled the other man to the floor just in time to dive beneath the hail of gunfire unleashed by the two M16-wielding men of ill repute standing between them and other places that were filled with less bullets and blood. While Murtaugh and Riggs scrambled to get behind a pair of heavy wooden pony walls, Tito rolled off of the bed to try and take shelter behind it--the men might have been there to rescue him, but bullets didn't tend to discriminate.

Murtaugh withdrew his handgun from its holster at his hip, his pulse thudding in his ears. His two-week reprieve from getting shot at was officially over. 

Across the walkway from him, crouched behind his own wall, Riggs held up his gun, the slide of which was locked back. "Don't suppose you've got some .45's on you?"

"What?" Murtaugh hissed. "How do you not have any more bullets?"

"This isn't my gun! I got if off a dead guy."

"Why in the _hell_ don't you have _any of your guns?"_

"Because I didn't plan on using them!" Riggs leaned out from behind cover long enough to whip the handgun towards the archway. Someone howled, and Riggs grinned in triumph. "Oops, sorry, were you using that nose?"

"Okay. Well, now what?" Murtaugh asked. Riggs shrugged. "Why don't you, you know." He waved his hand in a vague pattern that they both knew meant nothing at all. "Do your smoke thing?"

Riggs shot him an odd look, his eyebrows climbing towards his hairline. "Or, _better_ idea." He reached into his pocket and withdrew a little metal ball about the size of an apple.

"A grenade?" Murtaugh asked. "You didn't bring your bag of guns, but you brought a _grenade?"_  

"It's my pocket grenade," Riggs stated, as if that was an actual, acceptable answer, or something that _normal_ people had on them. He pulled the safety pin.

Murtaugh popped up from behind his pony wall, squeezing off three quick rounds to give Riggs enough time to hurl the grenade through the archway at the men standing there. Murtaugh and Riggs ducked and braced, and the room shook as the detonation punched a hole clean through the hardwood floor, and tore through the two murder-men that were probably regretting their career choices.

Riggs peeked over the top of his pony wall. He nodded in satisfaction. "And there you go. Bad guys are dead."

"Are you insane?" Murtaugh already knew the answer to that-- _yes, yes he was._ "What if they would have tossed that back at us?"

"Pretty sure that only happens in movies, Rog."

"Why didn't you just do your smoke thing?" Because that seemed to have been the easier—and less-likely-for-Murtaugh-to-die—option.

Riggs held his gaze for all of two seconds before he looked away, a hand coming up to try and tame his unruly hair as he busied himself with rounding the bed and hauling a trembling--and _pissed as hell,_ by the look of it--Tito up off the floor. "They know that trick by now. A few escaped earlier, and I'm willing to bet they told the rest of their buddies. The element of surprise is gone." Riggs shoved Tito right between his shoulder blades, forcing the shorter man to stumble forward and march towards the archway. "'Sides, can't go getting myself shot dead. Not before I make sure this waste of a human life gets the maximum amount of life sentences the State of California can give him, anyway."

It took a couple of seconds for Murtaugh to fully process what Riggs had said. Hope blossomed in his chest, but he didn't dare let it show in his eyes. "So, does that mean...?"

Riggs cast him a sideways glance. "It means that if he was to die with you here, and you didn't shoot me, then you'd become an accomplice. I'm not willing to do that to you, or to Trish, or to your kids. So if you want to do this the cop way, then we'll do it the cop way." Riggs's grip on Tito's hairy shoulder tightened until his knuckles bled white. He leaned forward. "And if you just so happen to choke to death in your cell in the middle of the night, well..." he hissed in Tito's ear. 

Murtaugh probably wasn't supposed to overhear him, so he pretended that he hadn't, if only to prevent an argument. If Riggs was willing to wait for a conviction before murdering Tito in cold blood, where security cameras and guards would report that nobody had had any involvement--after all, who would ever suspect the shadows?--then that was just fine with him. It gave him that much longer to try and talk Riggs out of it.

Or maybe it gave him that much longer to talk Avery into discretely transferring Tito to a prison that Riggs would never find him in.

Riggs had just "helped"--more like "thrown"--Tito past the hole in the floor when Murtaugh suddenly snorted. The scraggly man paused and sent a questioning stare his way. 

"Riggs, there is no way in hell you're getting into my car like that." If the two weeks worth of dirt caked to his bare feet and the plaster dust in his hair wasn't bad enough, then the blood soaking three quarters of his body definitely made Murtaugh's decision for him. He didn't want to deal with any of it: The impossible stains, the metallic smell, the _certainty_  that they would be detained by border patrol in record time... Based on the fact that Riggs was still barefoot two weeks after he had disappeared, and that he was wearing the same clothing Murtaugh had last seen him in,Murtaugh was willing to wager that the clothes on Riggs's back were the only ones he had; the only possessions of his that he had cared to take with him.

Riggs quirked an eyebrow. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Take a shower?" He waved a hand at the two freshly-exploded murder-men. Tito still had men willing to wade through the carnage to try and rescue their employer; more were probably on the way, so Riggs didn't even have time for a navy shower.

"I've got one of Harper's diaper bags in my trunk. A towel, too."

Riggs's lip curled. "If you think I'm swaddling myself in a whole bunch of Huggies--"

"The _wet wipes,_ Riggs. Jesus, what were you raised by? Wolves?"

Riggs sniffed, offended. "Nereids," he corrected, which would have sounded like complete gibberish if Murtaugh hadn't heard Riggs mention them before; that night had been filled with Google and Wikipedia. "Wet wipes work. Let's skedaddle before Tito gets any bright ideas."

Turns out having a blood-soaked nutjob manhandling a known drug kingpin was incredibly effective at clearing the streets. Murtaugh had parked on the other side of the plaza the hotel butted up against; a walk that should have included a lot of shoulder-brushing with strangers. Their stroll featured none of that. Those that didn't outright turn and flee after taking one look at Riggs gave them a wide berth, and not even the most daring of pickpockets dared to get within striking distance. Riggs didn't seem to mind the attention--and _fear--_ his appearance drew. Murtaugh just felt embarrassed, which he figured probably wasn't the appropriate emotion for their situation.

Perhaps crazy really _was_ contagious. If anybody could manage it, it would be Riggs.

Riggs practically scrubbed his skin raw, tearing through two and a half packages of wet wipes before Murtaugh deemed his hands, face, and arms clean enough. They did the best they could with Riggs's clothes and hair, too, but baby wipes weren't exactly made for that purpose. Murtaugh had found an old Tide Pen buried at the bottom of the diaper bag, stashed there in case any baby vomit ever found its way to one of his work shirts. When he held it up in offering and raised a questioning eyebrow, Riggs had given a breathy chuckle--a _genuine laugh._ Success: Mood lightened. Sort of. 

An old threadbare beach towel, whose stains were indistinguishable from its faded design, was spread out across the passenger's seat. If Murtaugh ignored the metallic scent of blood, the taste of iron that hovered in a cloud around them, then he could pretend that they were just driving back home from a day at the beach. He would have preferred that option. Why was nothing that he and his partner did ever _normal?_

"There," Murtaugh said, ducking back out of the passenger side of his car after ensuring that the towel wouldn't come undone from the seat. He nodded to Tito. "Put him in the back."

"Hm. I've got a better idea." Riggs hooked one foot behind Tito's ankles, and shoved the heavier man's shoulder. Tito toppled backwards into the open trunk, cracking the back of his head against the raised door as he fell. Riggs flung Tito's legs the rest of the way in when he attempted to kick out at his captors in retaliation, and then slammed the trunk closed with a grin of...well, it wasn't quite _satisfaction,_ but if was probably the closest that Riggs was going to get.

Murtaugh sighed.

"What? You can't tell me that Border Control wouldn't give us trouble with him in the back."

"You can't tell me that Border Control won't think to check our trunk," Murtaugh shot back. Riggs opened his mouth to argue. He paused. His mouth closed with a hollow _click_ of his teeth. "That's not why I sighed. I have something for you in the trunk." He pushed Riggs out of the way and popped the trunk back open. Ignoring Tito's enraged glare and the swears that would have had more of an impact had they not been shouted from around a ball gag, Murtaugh reached up into one of the trunk's side compartments, feeling around blindly until his fingers ran across well-worn leather. "I've been waiting to do this for two weeks," Murtaugh informed his partner, right before swinging a pair of boots directly at the side of Riggs's head.

On some level, Murtaugh knew that the blow would never connect. Even if his partner _wasn't_ some weird shadow monster with unclear abilities, Riggs was still a trained Navy SEAL. So Murtaugh wasn't that shocked when Riggs caught his wrist and plucked the boots from his hand in one fluid movement. 

"You've been waiting two weeks to commit a battery with a pair of shoes? What are you, a sociopath?" Riggs frowned at the boots, squinting at the sun-faded leather, and the patched hole in the toe of the left one from where a bit of well-intentioned friendly fire had torn through it. "Are these _mine?"_

"Yes. I kept them for you." Murtaugh thought it would be weird to see the insane Texan without his cowboy boots. Though, he hadn't expected to show up and find that Riggs had, apparently, not deemed it necessary to get a new pair of shoes after he had lost his. How his partner had gone barefoot for half a month was beyond him.

"Oh. Uh..." Riggs cleared his throat. "You waited two weeks to hit me with my own boots?" That was about as close to a _thank you_ as Murtaugh had been expecting. Riggs flashed him a tentative grin, an expression that spoke to the vague discomfort the younger man felt at whatever emotions were swirling up in that loose-screwed head of his. "Admit it, Rog, you only came all the way down here to put a boot print in my face."

"Just get in the damn car, Riggs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sequel to "For a While" has arrived! I love writing this AU, guys. So much. 
> 
> This story will be more plot-driven than "For a While" was. It'll mirror some parts of season 2, but "A Moment More" will mainly do its own thing. It'll also be longer, about 10-15 chapters if I play my cards right. So obviously the chapters will be considerably shorter, but they'll also be less fragmented.
> 
> Also please forgive my Spanish. I haven't used my high school Spanish knowledge in like five years, okay, and I'm not even that good at my own native language.


	2. Chapter 2

Murtaugh thought that he would feel pride when he frogmarched Tito through the front doors of the LAPD. Instead, all he felt was exhaustion.

Six hours. _Six hours_ in the car, and not a word had been spoken. Not from Riggs, anyway. Murtaugh had done quite a bit of talking on his own, trying to start some sort of conversation that he could use to ease his partner into the topic that he really wanted to tackle. But Riggs seemed determined to set a record for the longest one-sided conversation. No matter what kind of prompting Murtaugh tried, the most he got out of the scruffy man was a grunt or a breathy snort. Even when he mentioned Harper and how she had missed him coming around, Riggs only hummed a wordless acknowledgment while staring at Murtaugh with a look he usually reserved for suspects that were particularly baffling. 

Riggs only spoke after they had already dropped Tito off in Booking, and even then, Riggs neglected to meet Murtaugh’s eye. "I'm gonna go raid the lost-and-found," he said, shuffling in the direction of the stairwell leading to the basement. Murtaugh bobbed his head in agreement. It would be better not to look like an axe murderer for what he was sure was waiting upstairs to greet them. Hopefully Riggs would have the common sense to stick his head in a sink or something, too. "I'll meet you in Avery's office."

Murtaugh didn't even get that far. He barely got two steps away from the elevator bay before Bailey was in front of him, eyes wide and jaw set. 

"You don't want to be here right now," she hissed as she took his arm and tried to lead him back towards the elevator. "An I.A. board is here." Murtaugh peered over the top of her head towards the glass-walled conference room, where Avery and five men with no-nonsense expressions and identical suits seemed to be in the middle of a heated debate that was quickly approaching a shouting match. Even with five against one, Avery still looked to be winning. Maybe Murtaugh didn't give him enough credit. "The Captain's trying to cover for you, but it's not going well. You need to leave before you mess things up even more."

"I didn't mess anything up," Murtaugh said. "It was all Riggs. He's the one that ran off to Mexico."

"And you followed him," Bailey shot back. "And if you want to keep your job, you have been on a _fishing trip_ for two weeks, in a place with very shitty reception." Which was, admittedly, close enough to the truth. Murtaugh's cell reception had been pretty close to abysmal, and _fishing_ was a good enough metaphor for what he had been doing--if drug kingpins could be considered an exotic type of fish. _Look now and behold the non-existent majesty of the Murderous Narcotrafficker, whom my partner has dibs on flaying. Served on a bed of wilted greens._

"I appreciate the concern, Bailey," Murtaugh said, "but come on. I've got this." He raised his hand in the air, drawing Avery's attention over his way. Seeing his old partner didn't make Avery look too happy--if anything, his face bled an even darker shade of red. Avery straightened his suit coat, said something short to the gathered I.A. board, and then left them behind in the conference room.

"Your funeral," Bailey muttered before making a quick retreat. Avery might have been a short man, but he could be downright _terrifying_ when he was really pissed. 

Avery bared his teeth in a faux smile as he approached the taller man. "Murtaugh," he greeted through his clenched jaw. "Let's talk in my office. How was your fishing trip?" The moment the door was closed, Avery rounded on him with a vengeance. The muscle in his jaw shifted as he ground his teeth together and fought to keep his facial expression under control. "You didn't find him," he deadpanned.

"Ye of little faith," Murtaugh scoffed, as if he hadn't lacked all faith in himself, too. "Riggs is downstairs making himself presentable. Well, his version of it, anyway."

The tension in Avery's shoulders blew away on the breath of his heavy sigh. "Oh, thank _god,"_ he muttered. "After two weeks, I figured it was a lost cause. So...he's okay?"

Murtaugh shrugged. "It's _Riggs."_

"I was afraid you'd say that." Avery sat in his chair slowly, as if he was fifty years older and had the bones and joints to prove it. "And if he's here, then I suppose that means he completed his mission."

"Yeah. About that." Murtaugh's grin was so wide that his cheeks burned. "Brought you a little something something back from Mexico."

Avery's eyes widened, his jaw dropping open. "You _didn't."_

"Bagged, tagged, and stewing in a holding cell," Murtaugh reported with pride. "Think that'll smooth things over with I.A.?" he asked, hooking a thumb in the direction of the conference room. 

"It'll do more than that," Avery said with an enthusiastic nod. 

The smile slid off of Avery's face right as an uneasy feeling settled in Murtaugh's gut. His skin suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if it didn't fit quite right around the shoulders and knees. A peculiar chill worked its way through Avery's office, grabbing and dragging at his ankles, trying to pin him in place while the little voice in his brain, the one left over from a more primitive era, urged him to get up and run.

Luckily, Murtaugh had quite a bit of practice ignoring that familiar air.

Twisting in his seat, pretending that he was just stretching his back, Murtaugh's eyes scanned the bullpen until he found who he was looking for. Riggs was stepping off of the elevator, a displeased grimace on his face as he pulled at the sagging neckline of the LAPD sweatshirt he wore. As Murtaugh watched out of the corner of his eye, Bailey strode over to stand in front of the man, looking him over with a critical eye. Riggs, surprisingly, said nothing at all, even when Bailey surged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck in a quick hug. It lasted for only a second--neither Riggs nor Bailey were the type to appreciate being accused of having pesky things such as f _eelings_ \--before Bailey pulled away and returned to her desk, leaving a dazed Riggs standing on his own.

"Seriously," Avery asked, his voice low. "How's he doing?"  

"Hell if I know." Murtaugh rubbed at his forehead. Since when had he had so many wrinkles there? _Since you got kids,_ other parents would say. _Since you got Riggs,_ anybody who actually knew anything would say. "He was going to kill Tito in cold blood." He was going to rip him apart, the slow and painful way, the _this is personal way_ \--people in their right mind didn't do that.

"But he didn't," Avery said. "You brought him back."

A muscle in Murtaugh's cheek twitched, pulling the corner of his mouth into a cheap imitation of a smile. "Maybe."

The glass door swung open. "How are LAPD sweats the only thing we have in the lost-and-found?" Riggs asked without preamble. He fell into the chair next to Murtaugh's in his customary sprawl. "These are uncomfortable as hell. We actually give these to crime victims? What, are we trying to traumatize them even more?" Avery cleared his throat. Riggs barely even raised his eyes from the drawstring of his sweatpants that he was struggling to pull taut and tie in a knot as he said, "Hey Cap."

Avery took in Riggs’s odd state of dress, and the bits of dried blood on Riggs’s face and neck that the wet wipes had missed. "Do I even want to know?" he asked. Riggs rolled his shoulders in a disinterested shrug. At least he had shared Murtaugh’s thought of rinsing his hair free of the blood-and-plaster mixture that had made him look like an extra in a B-rate movie about earthquakes. "You're not worried _even a little bit_ that this stunt of yours could actually get you fired this time? No? Of course you're not." He waved his hand in dismissal. "Both of you, out of my office. I've still got to untangle this I.A. mess you two dumped on me. Go home and rest assured that your debriefing tomorrow is going to be Hell on Earth." Avery stood from his desk, straightened his lapels and cuffs, and offered them a wan smile. "You two are a nightmare." The glass door snapped closed behind him.

Murtaugh blew out a steady breath. That could have gone worse. A _lot_ worse. He still had his badge, his rank, his life--all things considered, it was a win. The expression lingering on Riggs's face--like somebody had slammed a boot into his shin--didn't look like the expression of somebody thrilled with their victory. Murtaugh reached out to shove Riggs's shoulder in a gesture that he hoped came across as a show of camaraderie. Riggs had never been a fan of words, so Murtaugh elected not to use any; instead, he nodded towards the elevator bay.

The silence held all the way to the parking garage, where Riggs paused, hands automatically flying to the empty pockets of his borrowed sweatpants. "Oh," he intoned. "Right. I left my truck at Ronnie's." He cursed under his breath. He had forgotten all about that truck; it was one of many things he had put out of his mind when he had assumed he would soon be too dead to use them. "I swear, if it was towed to a junkyard again..."

"Would you be able to blame them?" Murtaugh asked. "That thing is rolling scrap metal." He delved in his pocket, reaching to the very bottom where lint and crumpled gum wrappers were usually the most interesting things he could hope to find. This time, he fished out a split ring that boasted barely five keys. He shook it, the keys clinking against one another like a mass of tiny, sad bells. He tossed them to Riggs once he had the bedraggled man's attention. "The tow truck was going to bring it to an impound lot. I had them park it in my driveway instead. Come on, I'll drive you."

Riggs's face twisted into something resembling discomfort. "Nah, Rog, I'll just hoof it. Get in some cardio. And a little bit of sun because, you know, you can never have too much vitamin D, and I actually spent the last two days in some guy's trunk, so I think I'll just stretch my legs a bit and--"

"Riggs, knock it off. I'm driving you, and I don't want to hear another word about it."

Riggs's mouth snapped shut. He retook his place in Murtaugh's passenger seat after folding up the blood-stained beach towel and tossing it in the trash. Usually, Murtaugh would say something at leaving such incriminating evidence in the parking garage of a police department. _Usually_. This time, he said nothing, and just waited for Riggs to get buckled in.

They drove in silence, uncomfortable just as every silence before had been uncomfortable. The air was thick with the unasked, the unsaid; the things that wanted to be spoken but were lodged too deep in their throats. Murtaugh knew it was foolish to think that his laconic partner would suddenly open up and volunteer personal information on his own, now that this difficult chapter of their lives looked to be coming to an end. Riggs knew it was foolish to think that things could return to normal--or whatever they considered that word to mean--after his conversation-ender of a suicide mission hadn't panned out. But still, they had hoped.

But raising two teenagers who would rather communicate through exasperated huffs and exaggerated eye-rolls had, unknowingly, prepared Murtaugh to deal with a man more taciturn than the average boulder. If someone didn't come to him to talk, then he would go to them; and he would make sure to block all accessible exits.

He swung the car easily onto the shoulder of a side street, the front passenger wheel bouncing up over the curb. He threw the parking brake and jabbed a finger in Riggs's direction before the other man could finish swearing from bashing his head into the roof. "What's wrong with you?" Murtaugh asked.

"What's wrong with _me?"_  Riggs groused. There was no short answer to that. "What the hell is wrong with _you?_  You take Avery's desk-scotch when nobody was looking?"

"You haven't been your usual pain-in-the-ass self since Mexico. You're acting weird, and I don't know how to _help you."_

Riggs frowned, once more staring at Murtaugh in that peculiar way of his: Out of the corner of his eye, as if he was getting ready to bolt. Or punch Murtaugh in the jaw. "Why?" he asked.

"'Why' what?"

"Why do you care about helping me?"

"Because you're my _partner,"_ Murtaugh said. Riggs's carefully blank expression briefly twisted, his eyebrows pinching together, his mustache twitching as the corners of his mouth pulled into a frown. It was a calculating stare mixed with a heavy dose of confusion, as if Riggs hadn't expected that answer at all; as if he didn't think they were partners anymore. And Murtaugh could have bashed his head against the steering wheel, because _of course_ Riggs thought that. The last actual conversation they had had pre-Mexico--the one _not_ held while tied to chairs in subway tunnels--had been the emotionally charged one in Murtaugh's foyer, when he had told Riggs that he had put in for a new partner--that Murtaugh was _giving up on him_. As far as Riggs knew, that request had gone through, and they were little more than coworkers. Which was _ridiculous,_ because who would go all the way to a foreign country and risk his life just to drag a coworker away from the edge of the metaphorical cliff? "Riggs, you're _my partner."_

"But you _know,"_ Riggs said, dancing around the issue again. He had said once that he was an excellent dancer; Murtaugh should have known he meant the verbal kind.

"Riggs, I fully mean it when I say this: You being an eldritch shadow cloud is _not_ the most repelling thing about you." That little fact was likely the only reason Murtaugh was still alive. "Actually, I'd say it's one of your only redeeming qualities." Riggs blinked and stared at him, face impassive, and for a moment, Murtaugh wondered if he had said the wrong thing. Maybe he had gone too far this time, and actually offended his stoic partner.

Riggs blinked again, then said, "That is literally the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me." Something in the air shifted, and it felt just a little bit warmer. That had been the right thing to say.

"So then, what _are_ you?"

And that had been the _wrong_ thing. One of Riggs's eyebrows shot up. His hand raised to scratch at his ear and rub at the corner of his mouth as he turned his attention to the street outside. Murtaugh had been hoping for a name, preferably something with enough Google results to satiate his curiosity; instead, what he got was: "Hungry."

Murtaugh breathed in and out slowly; once, twice. "When was the last time you ate?" The younger man was swimming in his LAPD sweats, with enough extra fabric around the arms he could have used them like wings to fly away, and the drawstring from his pants trailed three quarters of the way to his knee. His face seemed sharper than Murtaugh remembered it--too little fat to round out the angle of his cheeks and brow bone. When Riggs's hands were still and not gesturing wildly as he talked, there was a faint tremor in his fingers.

Riggs opened the door a crack, and sucked in a deep breath when fresh air came rushing in. "The day I left? No, the day before."

_"Christ,_ Riggs!" Murtaugh cried. "Why the hell didn't you eat anything?" But Riggs was already out of the car, trotting towards the front doors of a squat building with wide front windows; the faded sign hanging over the sidewalk read _Wendy's Diner_. By the time Murtaugh had turned off the car and caught up, Riggs had already picked out a booth in the corner, and was piling his southern charm on the waitress so she wouldn't question him ordering a quarter of the menu. Murtaugh slid into the opposite seat with an amicable smile and a request for whichever beverage they had with the highest caffeine content.

Riggs attacked his food like a man starved--which Murtaugh supposed was true--with plate after plate of pancakes and bacon disappearing down his throat. Only after the sixth plate, when Riggs's frenzied scramble had slowed to a more natural pace, did Murtaugh finally say, "I'm proud of you."

Riggs glanced at the stack of dirty plates at the edge of the table. "What, that?" He grabbed a sausage link in his fingers and ripped off half of it with his teeth. "Have I set the bar that low, Rog?"

"I meant you bringing Tito Flores in instead of killing him." Murtaugh fell silent as the waitress swept by in a hurry; he offered an apologetic smile as she tried to grab all of the dirty plates while balancing a pot of coffee in her other hand. Once she was gone, he tossed a napkin at his partner. "And use a fork, you animal."

"Oh, so I'm an animal, now? I think I preferred "sand hobo"." Even so, Riggs dropped what was left of the sausage link, and picked up his fork. After a moment, he said, "There's always tomorrow."

"He's in custody, Riggs," Murtaugh said. "He'll never be a free man again. Don't you think it's time to let it go? To move on?"

Riggs's head snapped up, his face eerily still. For just a second--one that Murtaugh would attribute to a trick of the light, had he not known better--a faint glow glimmered in Riggs's eyes, lurking at the back of his pupils. 

"No," he said, and that was that.

Riggs made a hasty retreat when they returned to the Murtaugh house. He declined an invitation to come inside, although Murtaugh could tell that he wanted to take him up on the offer. "I would," he said, casting a glance up at the house, lights shining invitingly through the dining room windows, "but I'm beat. Tell Trish I said hi."

Trish would have rather heard it from the man himself, just so she could see that he was actually all right. A few texts and a blurry, half-focused picture Murtaugh had managed to snap during the wait at the border wouldn't be enough for her and her mothering. But Murtaugh stepped aside and let Riggs climb into his truck anyway.

Murtaugh caught the door before Riggs could pull it closed. "See you at work tomorrow?" he asked. "I _will_ see you?" It was the same question he had asked at the start of their partnership. Technically, this was the start of a new partnership, too, because now Murtaugh _knew._  Either way, his concern from back then was the same concern he had now, and only verbal confirmation would appease him. He wasn't against handcuffing Riggs to something.

Riggs shrugged, noncommittal. Before Murtaugh could reach for his handcuffs to make good on his unspoken threat, Riggs said, "If I don't sleep through the entire week, yeah. 

Relief flooded through Murtaugh. It made his lungs ache and head feel light. "Avery will hunt you down if you don't make our debriefing tomorrow."

Instead of an actual answer, Riggs snorted and pulled the door closed. He didn't say goodbye.

Murtaugh couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not.

* * *

His phone chirped at five in the morning.

Murtaugh groaned as he reached for it, his hand patting blindly at his nightstand as his eyes struggled to adjust to the pale light of early morning. Beside him, still wrapped in the warmth and comfort of sleep, Trish shifted with a quiet mutter for him to _shut that damn thing up_ before it ended up flung out the window. Murtaugh squinted at the screen until his brain worked through a sluggish march towards full consciousness. He frowned and accepted the call.

"Avery?" he whispered. He rolled out of bed and shuffled out into the hall. "Are you working for dispatch now?" he joked.

_"You need to get to the office right now,"_  Avery said, his tone demanding no argument. 

"What's going on?" It had to be something serious if Avery was already there, and was the one making the call.

_"Just get here. ASAP."_ His phone beeped at him as the line disconnected. It looked like he was going into work early.

The bullpen was awfully empty for a police department apparently in the middle of a crisis. Only the small night crew and a few early risers sat at their desks, each and every one of them cradling mugs of coffee in their hands as they muttered prayers to the caffeine gods. Avery was in his office, but he wasn't alone; Scorsese was there, stood in front of the Captain's desk and looking quite like a student being reprimanded by a principal. Murtaugh didn't wait for an invitation and pulled the glass door open.

"--suicide using a pillow, but I didn't find any cloth fibers in his mouth-- Oh. Murtaugh. Good morning." Scorsese frowned. "Or just _morning._ It's not that good."

"It's five a.m.," Murtaugh deadpanned, quirking an eyebrow; in other words, _no shit it's not good._  "What happened?"

Avery cleared his throat. "Right. Thank you, Scorsese. Let me know if you find anything else."

Scorsese glanced back and forth between Avery and Murtaugh. Both men fixed him with purposeful glances, although Murtaugh's was partially clouded with confusion. "Do the jocks' homework and still not invited to the cool kids' table. High school all over again," he muttered.

Once Scorsese was gone, Murtaugh repeated his previous question. Avery stared at the detective for a long, tense moment. Right before the silence was crossing into _awkward_ territory, Avery asked, "Where's Riggs? I thought you'd have picked him up on the way in."

"I sent him a text telling him to get here as soon as he wakes up, but he told me yesterday that he was exhausted. I figured he'd be less annoying if he slept a few more hours."

"So last time you saw him was last night? What time exactly? God, Murtaugh, you just left him without supervision? It's your job to watch him!"

Murtaugh frowned. "I didn't think he needed a babysitter while he was passed out in his trailer." Avery groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Seriously, Avery. What happened?"

"Tito Flores was found dead in his holding cell at 4:37 this morning." Short. Quick. Like ripping off a band-aid, or getting sucker punched in the throat.

"What?" Murtaugh demanded. "And, what? You think Riggs did it?" It wasn't an unexpected conclusion. Tito's arrest hadn't been made public yet, so nobody else knew he was at the LAPD other than the police--out of all of them, Riggs was the most motivated. And who else had been running around for the past two weeks trying to murder Tito? Who else had _explicitly stated_ that they could sneak into a _prison_ to commit a murder? How could Murtaugh have been so stupid as to just let Riggs leave yesterday?

"Before you went to Mexico, you said something about Riggs...and smoke," Avery said.

Had he? He couldn't quite remember. In his defense, he had been hopped up on enough adrenaline to fell an elephant, and had had about thirty different things vying for his attention. Him babbling some half-horrified attempt at an explanation of what he had seen in a quick email to Avery rang a bell the more he thought about it, though. Slowly, Murtaugh nodded. "Riggs turned into a smoke...thing." It was so weird to say out loud, to another person and not just a foggy motel mirror--like what he was saying was taboo. 

Avery pulled his open laptop closer to him, tapped a few keys, and spun it around for Murtaugh to see. "Did he look like this?"

On the screen was footage from the CCTV camera down in the holding cells, paused on a key frame. A lumpy form that had to be Tito was huddled on a cot, crammed as far into the corner as he could get as a dark gray smudge sat half in the cell and half out, slipping right between the bars as if they weren't even there. Avery hit play, and the gray smudge, billowing and rolling as smoke did, slithered through the air into the holding cell and enveloped the camera. The darkness cleared four minutes later, drifting back out of the cell through the bars, leaving the lifeless body of Tito crumpled on the cot, his face smashed into his pillow.

Avery spun his laptop back around. Murtaugh swore. Riggs stopped whistling as he stepped into the office. 

Riggs looked at the grim faces of the two men. "Damn. Who died?" he joked. "Let me guess: Football player who liked the French horn?"

"C'mon, man," Murtaugh said. "Cut the crap. You know what happened."

Riggs clicked his tongue as he took a seat. "Y'know, I'm not actually omniscient? Common mistake, though." His eyes darted between Avery and Murtaugh when neither reacted to his attempt at humor. The mirth in his eyes darkened. "Tough room."

"I thought we had a plan," Murtaugh said. "No. You know what? I blame myself. It was foolish of me to actually believe that you were going to just go back to your trailer and sleep."

Riggs, at least, had the decency to look sheepish. A _normal_ person would have looked guilty, or perhaps trapped. Riggs just ran a hand through his hair and said, "Ain't no law against it."

"Isn't a-- _yes there is,_ Riggs!" Murtaugh cried, while Avery just buried his face in his hands and groaned an unspecified plea to a few choice deities. "There absolutely is!"

"Okay, the guy might not be in _perfect_ health, but, look! I didn't even touch the guy, okay? He technically did it to himself."

"You _smothered_ him, Riggs! You killed him, even if you didn't actually touch him," Avery said. "I have no idea how you did it, or how any of this is even possible. But I _swear to God,_ Riggs, if there was even a small chance of anybody believing any of this, I would have you arrested, no matter how much I like you on occasion. I will not tolerate vigilantes, especially not ones under my own command, and _definitely_ not ones that target people that we've already got nailed to a wall!"

Throughout Avery's entire rant, Riggs's eyebrows had furrowed more and more. At first, Murtaugh had thought that he was getting annoyed or angry at Avery's sort-of-lecture, but he knew what anger looked like on Riggs's face. The man didn't look mad the same way other people did. He didn't tend to glower and shout. He stared, his face blank and eyes alight with silent rage--sometimes literally--as he became eerily still. And sometimes, Murtaugh knew, when Riggs was _really_ angry, he would growl and snarl and bare his teeth, and then snap somebody's femur.

Riggs wasn't angry. He was, however, confused as hell. And he showed it when he said, "Yeah, okay, you lost me. This isn’t about Paulie’s Bar?"

Murtaugh and Avery exchanged a glance over Riggs's head. One raised his eyebrows, and the other shrugged.

"Tito Flores... _died,_ this morning," Murtaugh finally said. 

Murtaugh wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting from Riggs. Guilt, perhaps, or maybe fear at being caught--normal reactions for a normal person, which Riggs was decidedly not. So maybe pleasure, or pride. Or, based on the theory his brain was laboriously forming at the back of his mind, he had been expecting anger at the kill being taken from him, or jealousy. Surprise, maybe. Relief, if anything.

Instead, all he got was a blank expression as Riggs stared at the far wall. 

After a moment, Riggs sniffed, then clicked his tongue. "Huh. Well, damn," he said. "And here I thought y'all were calling me in for something _important."_

"Riggs, Flores was _killed,"_ Murtaugh said.

"And you think I should care?" Riggs asked. "Unless you forgot, I _wanted_ him dead. I wanted to kill him, and--" Riggs paused, his flat expression twisting ever so slightly down into a frown. "Oh. You think _I_ killed him."

"We have you on video doing it," Avery said. His earlier confidence was gone from his voice, though, replaced by an uncertain lilt that almost turned his statement into a question. 

Riggs huffed a breath. "Like hell you do." His eyes darted to the laptop still sitting half-open and facing Avery. He somehow turned propelling himself from his chair and gliding across the room into one fluid movement that Murtaugh wouldn't have been able to replicate without twisting both of his ankles and throwing out his back. Riggs spun the laptop around, ignoring Avery's disgruntled protest when he did so by grabbing the top of the screen and lifting it that way. His eyes were immediately drawn to the folded smudge of pixels that had been Tito's body; the corner of his mouth twitched upwards for a fraction of a second before settling again. 

And then Riggs looked to the frozen mass of smoke weaving between the cell bars as it retreated, and he _laughed._

"Yeah, that ain't me."

"It's got to be," Murtaugh said. "How many smoke...people...can there be in L.A.?" As soon as he asked the question, he realized he _really_ didn't want to know.

"How am I supposed to know that, Rog? Do I look like a Hellion census to you?" Riggs waved at the screen. "That doesn't even look like me!"

"It's smoke," Avery pointed out. "All smoke looks the same."

"Whoa, Cap, didn’t know you were racist," Riggs said without any bite to his words. Avery looked to Murtaugh, who shrugged and held up his hand, his forefinger and thumb half an inch apart. Avery huffed and rubbed at his forehead. Riggs cleared his throat, the beginning of a grimace forming on his face that usually meant he was about to broach a subject that he would rather shoot and be done with. "C'mon, Rog. You saw me before. There's an obvious thing that guy is missing."

Maybe the difference was obvious to other people, but Murtaugh was having trouble even picturing that terrifying night in the subway tunnels in enough detail to use as a comparison. He had still had some tranquilizer coursing through his system, and getting up close and personal with a defibrillator hadn't helped his mental state. Quite a bit of that night had become a blur, a half-forgotten nightmare, the memories of which made him feel as if he was still floating on a cushion of drugs, pain, and a heaping dose of dissociation. 

What he _could_ remember clearly, he still had trouble putting to words. The indescribable _thing_ that Riggs had become still chilled Murtaugh to the bone, even though he _knew_ that that creature had been his partner, and wasn't out to hurt him or anything he cared about. He could remember the shadows that moved like smoke, that prowled through the air on a nonexistent breeze as it expanded and shrank and morphed into the vague forms of the monsters children feared lurked under their bed, of the flickering white glow that burned in the center of the mass of shadows, like a full moon behind thick autumn clouds--

Murtaugh leaned closer to the laptop screen and squinted. He peered at the trail of smoke, and now that Murtaugh _really_ looked at it, he realized that it had _so much less of a presence_ than Riggs had had--like comparing a starved garter snake to the might of a saltwater crocodile. 

_There,_ at the center of the smoke: _Nothing._

No glow. Just more smoke.

Murtaugh straightened up, and looked towards Riggs. His revelation must have been clear on his face, because Riggs said, "See? Told you." 

"See what?" Avery asked, leaning forward on his arms to look at the CCTV footage for whatever Murtaugh had found. 

"Riggs didn't do it," Murtaugh said. 

"What? You're sure?"

"Your confidence in me is heartwarming," Riggs deadpanned. "You really thought I would kill Tito where I work? I'm _crazy,_ but I'm not _stupid."_

Avery sighed. "Well, I guess that makes me feel better--"

"I was just going to wait until he was transferred, maybe hide out in the transport and kill him there."

"--I need an antacid." Avery pulled open one of his desk drawers, rummaging through it in search of the bulk-sized Tums bottle he had taken to keeping nearby ever since Riggs had moved to California. He found it wedged behind his stash of scotch. "If this wasn't an... _inside job,_ then the matter still stands that we have a murderer on the loose," Avery said. "And not just any murderer, but a...Hellion? Am I using that word correctly?" Riggs flashed a thumbs up. "Well, I'm sure your knowledge in that area will be integral to solving this one, so against my better judgment, the case is yours."

"Hmm. Hard pass," Riggs hummed. "Unless you're wanting me to find this guy just to give him a high five."

"If the situation was any different, I'd give it to Bailey," Avery said. "But, for obvious reasons, I can't do that."

Riggs shrugged, picking at the dirt under his nails in disinterest. "Have Scorsese write it off as a suicide, or a heart attack." He fixed Avery with a flat smile. "I'm recusing myself. Conflict of interest, being that I have no interest in solving this case."

Murtaugh squared his shoulders, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he prepared to call on anything--duty, honor, whatever--in order to get Riggs to see sense and just do his damn job. Avery's raised, placating hand put a stop to that. The younger man smiled, the expression warm and agreeable. He nodded his head. "I understand. You're right. We've got other competent detectives that can handle this."

"See? Exactly!"

"And that'll give you plenty of time to go see Doctor Cahill every morning. Since this case is too emotionally distressing for you to work it, and all."

Riggs's eyes narrowed. "You've got to be kidding me," he said, voice dangerously close to a growl. Avery appeared to be unmoved. "No way in hell am I doing that."

"You will if you want anything other than desk duty for the foreseeable future," Avery said. "Or, I suppose you could prove yourself stable and in control by solving this case. Then I don't see the point in wasting the Doctor's time."

For a long, tense moment, the office was silent. Murtaugh's eyes darted back and forth between Riggs and Avery--an unstoppable force and an immovable object. By virtue, neither should be able to yield. But one of them still would, or else they would end up spending the rest of their days in the office. Murtaugh hoped one of them would give up soon, or at least break for lunch.

Finally, Riggs huffed. "Manipulation, Captain? Really?"

Avery cracked a smile. "Well, when you don't respond to threats, and the orders from a superior _clearly_ mean nothing to you..."

Riggs flashed him a thumbs up. "Yup, okay. Whatever. Rog, you coming?" Riggs asked as he strolled out of the office and toward the elevator bay. Murtaugh didn't think Riggs would stage a walk-out in protest, but he also wouldn't put it past him.

"Where're we going?" Murtaugh asked, suspicious. Was it too much to ask to go one day without doing something that could cost him his life, or his job, or both?

"Down to Holding?" Riggs said, as if it was supposed to be obvious. "Y'know, scene of the crime? Detective stuff? You sure you’re an industry professional?" He jabbed at the call button for the elevator with an impatient tap of his foot. "Gotta start somewhere!" He paused. "But I'm still giving this guy a high five!"

Murtaugh sighed, the sound deep and exhausted. He reminded himself it was never too late to request a new partner.

He joined Riggs in the elevator, anyway.

Avery strode after them, his pace picking up when Riggs started to smack at the _doors close_  button.

“Riggs— Hey, Riggs! I’m not done talking to you yet! What were you saying about Paulie’s Bar?”

“What?” Riggs called, as if the closing elevator doors were too loud to hear over.

“Riggs, who did you hit?”

“Sorry, can’t hear you, solving crime!”

The doors closed on Avery’s exasperated sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol lemme tell you the second half of this chapter KICKED my ASS. Seriously, I rewrote it six times. But hey, we're getting somewhere! Murtaugh is about to have his official introduction to the Hellion world that he never asked for! Suck it up, Roger, only like 80% of them will actively try to kill you.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment on your way out!


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